Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Daily Writing

Things I’m thinking about

The empty promises of Xi Jinping. What promises specifically? “Reform”?

The Federal reserve is scheduled to raise interest rates 0.25% today. How will the market respond?

Where can we find opportunities in this environment?

What is ‘open interest’?

Why is it significant if LIBOR moves higher?

How to improve my technical analysis?

How can I improve the structure of my days?

Trading Log

9:48 AM

From a trading standpoint, shorting S&P Futures has been an effective strategy since the beginning of the month of December. Today’s FOMC meeting will shed light on the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates moving into 2019. Will the Fed hold off on raising rates next year if they feel global slowdown is becoming increasingly imminent? We currently sit on 100% cash headed into the FOMC meeting today.

In yesterday’s letter we noted that it would be an historical aberration for the Fed to raise rates when the probability of a rate hike falls below 75.00%.

The entire trading day is being dictated by the outcome of the FOMC meeting. We will know the Fed’s guidance for 2019 by 2:00 PM today. At that time, we will also learn whether the Fed has opted to raise its overnight rate by another 0.25%.

2:13 PM

After the fed announced its rate hike at precisely 2:00 PM the market started to drop considerably. The adage “buy the rumor, sell the news” seems especially appropriate in this case. The SPY fell more than 1.00% following the release of the fed announcement. The Fed also outlined its plans for 2019, and the message I took away from it was that they are just going to observe the market on a quarterly basis and make their decisions from there. I can’t reiterate this enough that the Fed absolutely needs to get rates back up to at least 4.00% or 5.00% to have baseline ammunition to counter ever a moderate economic slowdown.

Market Observations

Why is the price of copper falling so drastically?

US Treasury yields continue to move lower, which is surprising considering how many bond bears there are out there. The yields on the 10-year and 30-year US Treasuries are 2.82% and 3.06%, respectively. Overall treasuries were stuck in a holding pattern today.

The major news today is the Fed’s 0.25% rate hike that many pundits view as dovish. I find it unusual that the market is paying so much attention to this bit of news. That fact alone tells me that the market may not be healthy. The market is desperately struggling to eke out whatever good news they can find. Our view is that the Fed must find a way to bring rates back to a normal level that can sustain the next downturn. If we are currently in the next downturn then we could be in big trouble.